Like that saintly old man! How _could_ she think it. Skimpy was ready to burst into tears. And yet, he argued, there was nothing wicked about what he was to do. He wished only to help Jerry Binwell to secure the box of papers that could do naught but harm now—to help a man who could have no other aid. Why did the enterprise terrify him as a crime might? he asked himself in exasperation. Certainly as far as he could see there was no mischief in it. As far as he could see! Alas, Skimpy! How shortsighted a boy is apt to be! He began to say to himself that it was because everybody was down on Binwell, being poor and therefore unpopular, that he too was influenced by the prevalent feelings, even when he sought to be friendly. Yet this reasoning was specious. If it had involved no disobedience, his heart would have been light enough. He could have gone along gayly with his father, whom he trusted, and explored every chasm and cavity in Keedon Bluffs, or, for the matter of that, in the Great Smoky Mountains. But as he listened for the summons—a faint travesty of a drum-beat on the rail fence—he would grow rigid and pale, and when the boughs swaying in the blast touched with quick, tremulous twigs the clapboards of the roof with a tapping sound, he shivered, and started from his seat, and fell back again, hot and cold by turns. “I be glad fur ye ter hev no mo’ ter do with them Guythers, ennyhow,” said his father gravely. “They hev acted mighty strange bout’n Jerry Binwell—an’ ef they consorts with sech ez him me an’ mine can’t keep in sech comp’ny. Folks hev tuk ter specla’tin’ powerful bout’n Ab an’ him hevin’ been sech enemies—Ab war blinded through his treachery—an’ now livin’ peaceable together under one roof. Some folks ’low ez Ab hev got his reasons fur it, an’ they ain’t honest ones. I ain’t a-goin’ ter pernounce on that; I ain’t a-goin ter jedge, kase I don’t want ter be jedged. I reckon I’d show up powerful small—though honest—thar ain’t no two ways ’bout that, I thank the mercy. But ye done mighty well, Skimpy, ter gin up yer frien’ like I tole yer ter do thout no questions, kase this Binwell war thar. Ye’ll l’arn one day ez I hed a reason—a mighty good one, too.” He sucked his pipe sibilantly. “Ye done mighty well, Skimpy,” he repeated with an earnest sidelong glance at his son. Skimpy listened, half choking with the confession that crowded to his lips. And yet how could he divulge that he had given up Ike indeed for Binwell himself; how could he confide Binwell’s secret of the Bluffs, the story of the courier and his hidden box and the order to be shot as a deserter; and above all, how could he admit having assisted in throwing away old Corbin’s ladder—the malice and the mischief of it frightened him even yet.